Spring wanderings and tiny fingers

So March is nearly over and done. This month has been full of highs and lows as I continue my journey into motherhood. I have, however, made some time to explore the beautiful winter garden at my local National Trust property with baby T, and for once taking my ‘big camera’ rather than just my phone.

Sometimes I think I should just put away the cameras and enjoy just ‘being’ in a place, and I definitely want to make sure I do this as T gets bigger and older. But on this walk, I discovered that I really noticed so many signs of spring that I might have ordinarily strolled past.

I saw bumble bees pushing their way into tiny iris, and flowers of all kinds – many more than I imagined would be flowering at the beginning of March.

When you first enter the gardens, it is the striking carpet of yellow that first greets you. Hundreds, or more likely thousands, of tiny daffodils are all bursting open in unison. It makes me wonder how they all come out right on cue at the same time.

They positively glow golden when the sun catches behind their start shaped petals and orange trumpets…

Now I want to find out what this tree/shrub is, because these jolly yellow flowers won me over.

I think this is flowering currant? Anyway, it’s lovely whatever it is, and I’m sure my mum used to have a bush in the garden that was perfect for imaginary Flower Fairy games.

Having the aim of capturing ‘spring’ in the gardens made me realise hidden flowers, like these iris which were happily blooming away in behind other plants…

I can never work out if I like these pale blue iris or not – part of me thinks ‘ick’ but another part is drawn to their unusual colouring…

Catkins and curly hazel twigs, they are just so joyful!

Now blossom is really one of my favourite ‘flowers’ of the garden. Apple blossom, quince blossom, any-kind-of-fruit-blossom. I don’t know what tree this is, but those pink blushed petals are just heavenly in my books…

And then mummy stopped walking too much and T woke up, peeping out from her cosy pram cocoon.

So we headed off in search of the chickens, who run across their pen to greet you whenever someone approaches. We had a run in with a cockerel at a park in Manchester, who crowed so loudly that T’s bottom lip started to wobble and she burst into tears. Thankfully there were no crowing cockerel’s this day, although she did look rather unsure about them.

It’s in looking at all these tiny details of spring around the gardens that I also started to notice the tiny beautiful details of my sweet T – like her dainty lashes, the way the blue of her eyes change beneath the sky, and those tiny long fingers…